So, you got hacked…

So, you got hacked…

Yesterday afternoon Chipotle fell victim to having their company verified twitter account HACKED! Luckily the tweets were mostly short, sweet, and confusing to followers – we have seen worse things happen to company accounts!

The company handled the hack VERY well. Our good friend Joe was back and tweeting in only about 10 minutes.

So how can we avoid having our accounts hacked?

Whether you’re a personal user or business user of a social media account, we all face the risk of being hacked. It is hard to decipher how exactly hackers get into our accounts. But, there are ways we can be proactive in avoiding this scenario.

1. Do not share your password with anyone. This is common sense. Sharing your account password, especially company account, is setting yourself up to potentially have your account hacked.

2. After you sign in, sign out. If you’re using a shared computer or device, be sure to sign out after you’re done with your session. We see it all the time on Facebook when we accidentally leave ourselves signed in on a friends laptop.

3. Change your password often. You should not have the same password for your social media account for more than 90-120 days. This is a precaution that you should take with email passwords as well.

Speaking of passwords…

4. Be creative. Having the password “1234” or “ilovepr” is typical! Do something crazy. Something that may take you a while to remember, but makes it hard for anyone else to figure out.

The best thing you can do after you have already been hacked is to change your password immediately and follow these steps or come up with your own way of taking precautions.